Rebel Yell Quotes

“The time for war has not yet come, but it will come, and that soon. And when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Much of this behavior grew out of his faith, his desire to be uncompromisingly truthful at all times, and his very particular sense of Christian courtesy. He explained his refusal to voice disapproval of others by saying, “It is quite contrary to my nature to keep silence where I cannot but disapprove. Indeed I may as well confess that it would often give me real satisfaction to express just what I feel, but this would be to disobey the divine precept [judge not lest ye be judged], and I dare not do”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Jackson went happily into the field anyway, calmly picking and eating the ripe fruit even though, as Douglas observed, “the bullets seemed to be as plentiful as blackberries.” At one point he turned to his increasingly anxious aide and, with a large, juicy berry between his thumb and finger, asked Douglas casually “in what part of the body I preferred being shot.” Douglas, nervously handing the general berries while minié balls whistled overhead and buried themselves in the trees around them, replied that while his first choice was to be hit in his clothing, he preferred anyplace other than his face or joints. Jackson said he had “the old-fashioned horror of being shot in the back and so great was his prejudice on the subject that he often found himself turning his face in the direction from which the bullets came.” Just then a bullet thudded into a sapling near their heads, and Jackson, with a “vague remark about getting his horse killed,” reluctantly left the feast.18”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,” Douglas commented. Times change, and we change with them.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“never take counsel of your fears.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“You speak of your temptations. God withdraws His sensible presence from us to try our faith. When a cloud comes between you and the sun, do you fear that the sun will never appear again? I am well satisfied that you are a child of God, and that you will be saved in heaven, there forever to dwell with the ransomed of the Lord. So you must not doubt. . . . Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and My burden light,” and this is true, if we but follow Him in the prompt discharge of every duty . . . we should always seek by prayer to be taught our duty. If temptations are presented, you must not think that you are committing sin in consequence of having a sinful thought. Even the Saviour was presented with the thought of worshipping Satan. . . . Don’t doubt His eternal love for you.3”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Stonewall Jackson was master of all he surveyed. Two Union forces were withdrawing from his front. There was a certain beautiful symmetry to it. The campaign, which started with a single enemy army pursuing Jackson southward through the valley, would end with two beaten Union armies withdrawing from him in a northerly direction. A week later, Jackson advised his mapmaker, Hotchkiss, to 'never take counsel of your fears.' A person who followed such advice would be doomed to a short life.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“soldier named James A. Miller, of Harpers Ferry, had gotten drunk and shot and wounded his captain. An army court-martial had found him guilty and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Because Jackson was in a position to commute the sentence, a number of pleas for leniency were made to him on Miller’s behalf, including an impassioned one from Jackson’s friend Reverend James Graham. Jackson refused. He upheld the court-martial, and Miller was shot to death by the 2nd Virginia in Winchester on November 6. (It was later learned that Jefferson Davis, more sympathetic than his major general, actually did commute Miller’s sentence, but a messenger bearing his order got drunk and never delivered it.4) The men were learning quickly that, in Jackson’s command, unlike most of the rest of the army, or the army they thought they knew, there would be no bending of the rules. Jackson may have had trouble enforcing discipline in his section room with mischievous, fresh-faced college boys, but he had no trouble doing so in a rough army camp.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“As an instructor, he was patient, forbearing, and tolerant of mistakes, provided his students were trying diligently to learn. Jackson”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“The great and complicated political reasons for secession, thundered about in Congress and in the state legislatures, were not their reasons, which were more like those expressed by a captive Confederate soldier, who was not a slaveholder, to his puzzled Union captors. “I’m fighting because you’re down here,” he said.30”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“There is no way to know Jackson’s thought process as he prepared to engage the Union army in front of him. He knew very little about it and certainly he had no idea that, at the moment he ordered his men to advance, he was actually outnumbered five to one. But it was characteristic of the man that his means of determining the enemy’s strength was to hit the enemy in the face and then see what happened. Typical, too, was his impatience to fight. As at Port Republic, he chose to attack before his full force had arrived.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Some of them screamed for locks of his hair, to which the blushing general replied, “Really, ladies, this is the first time I was ever surrounded by the enemy!”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“So would a smallish, gaunt sorrel gelding that Jackson acquired for his wife during his Harpers Ferry posting and named Fancy. The horse turned out to have extraordinary endurance; a gentle, rocking gait that Jackson liked; and the ability, later on, to doze peacefully in the middle of the hottest fights. To everyone else in the war the horse was known as Little Sorrel. He became Jackson’s principal mount for the rest of his life.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“in a war that made a specialty of such changes.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“And, of course, he prayed and read his Bible and consecrated every act of his life, every thought he had, to God. He did this consciously, every day. The blessings of his life—and in the month of July in the year 1861, Jackson believed he was in a high state of grace—all came from the hand of God. At least part of his devotion involved reminding himself constantly of just that.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“If news of his impending doom bothered Jackson, he did not show it. He sent no urgent dispatches to Richmond; he asked no counsel of any of his officers. He wrote no dramatic letters home, as Banks had, bidding a sentimental farewell to his wife as his own death loomed. Jackson seemed, in fact, at the center of this building storm, to be completely calm.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Success depended once again on speed and deception, qualities that residents of the Shenandoah Valley were beginning to associate with Thomas Jackson. •”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Will you follow me back to where the fighting is going on?” The men—one hundred of them—responded with a resounding yes. Now Bee pointed to his left, up the slope toward the pine woods on the edge of Henry Hill. “Yonder stands Jackson like a stone wall,” he said. “Let’s go to his assistance.”16”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“General Lafayette McLaws”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“I will do nothing to superinduce sleep by putting myself at ease, or making myself more comfortable; if, however, in spite of my resistance I yield to my infirmity, then I deserve to be laughed at, and accept as punishment the mortification I feel.”19”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.”14”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“he found the general seated on a log, quite motionless, with his eyes closed. His cap, as usual, was pulled down to his nose. Hampton gave Jackson his report and volunteered to lead an advance over his new bridge. To Hampton’s complete amazement, the general did not speak, nor did he even move. He “sat in silence for some time, then rose and walked off in silence.” Jackson later was found prostrate and asleep underneath a tree, in spite of the daylong artillery battle that was screaming overhead. He seemed almost perfectly passive. When Longstreet sent an aide to him asking for his help, Jackson replied that he could do nothing. He later fell into such a deep sleep that his aides had trouble waking him. He fell asleep at dinner with a biscuit between his teeth. When he was awakened, he suddenly seemed to come to his senses, saying, “Now, gentlemen, let us at once to bed, and rise with the dawn, and see if tomorrow we cannot do something.”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“allow it to interfere with what he”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson

“vanguard. Jackson’s division was the old valley army:”
― S.C. Gwynne, Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson